The unpalatable reality of working for Apple

A fresh wave of reports unveiling exploitation in the iPad empire are forcing Apple to clean up up its act, reports Mark Engler.

‘Help wanted: factory worker to
install small components into items
manufactured by hand – iPhones and
iPads. Shifts may average 12 hours
per day, six days per week. You may
be expected to stand throughout.
Some exposure to hazardous
chemicals. Base pay: $42/week.
Additional benefits: shared
dorm room with five other
employees; safety netting at
facility to catch attempted
suicides. Please note:
applications will be checked
against blacklist of union sympathizers.’

Not interested in this
post? I can’t blame you.
Think this hypothetical job
description exaggerates the real
conditions under which Apple
products are made? Prior to this
year, a great many people would
have agreed. Today, fewer can claim
to be unaware of the truth.

Since the death of Steve Jobs, allegations have surfaced accusing Apple of exploiting it's workers.
Vectorportal.com Under a CC Licence

Apple’s exploitation of workers in
China isn’t unique. Other computer
companies are likewise drawn
like honey bees to the nectar of
negligible wages, natural waterways
open for dumping, and police forces
conveniently watchful for union
troublemakers. Nor are allegations
of abuse at Apple suppliers new. This
magazine, among others, has raised
red flags since the company started
exporting most of its manufacturing
more than a decade ago.

But recent events – the death of
Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs, a
fresh wave of investigative reports, and
protests by Chinese workers themselves
– have reopened discussion of a reality
we regularly prefer to ignore.

Here in the US, after Barack
Obama gave his annual State
of the Union address, Indiana
Governor Mitch Daniels offered the
Republican response. He celebrated
the departed Apple executive: ‘The
late Steve Jobs – what a fitting name
he had – created more of them
than all those stimulus dollars the president borrowed and blew.’

That Apple employs only around
43,000 people in the US, while
the 2009 stimulus created or saved
1.4 million jobs, according to the
nonpartisan Congressional Budget
Office, is just the sort of irrelevant
‘reality-based’ detail that followers of
this country’s politics know they are
expected to ignore.

Yet, accepting that Jobs was a ‘job
creator’, we can ask: ‘What kind of
employment did he produce?’

Most Apple jobs are low-wage retail
positions in the company’s cubed-glass
cathedrals. Apple Store employees
interviewed by labour journalist
Josh Eidelson report being casually
informed by managers that working
non-union is part of the job. When
several in the San Francisco Bay Area
expressed concerns about pay, they
were told, ‘Money shouldn’t be an
issue when you’re employed at Apple.’
Rather, according to management, serving at the altar of the Genius Bar™
‘should be looked at as an experience’.

Last year Apple, with its attention
to life-enriching experiences, earned
$400,000 in profit per employee,
exceeding such non-carpe diem
corporations as ExxonMobil and
Goldman Sachs.

Beyond direct hires, some
700,000 people work for Apple’s
suppliers, the majority at places like
the Chinese Foxconn plant, where,
sadly, making it to age 25 without
crippling repetitive stress injury is an accomplishment.

Sweatshop apologists contend
that such facilities are legitimate
stepping-stones on the path to
market prosperity. This
presumes that the grimmest
workshops of the industrial
revolution will never be
abolished – that there will
always be some hyper-exploitable
country in need of ‘development’,
whose young people can be
sacrificed to our desires for inexpensive
gadgets. These manufacturing jobs will
never come with dignified standards,
their argument suggests, so why try to
improve conditions at all?

The good news is that most people
are not so blasé about human rights.
Apple recognizes that demonstrations
against oppressive working conditions
could slow sales. Feeling the heat, it
has agreed to release lists of suppliers
and allow outside inspections of plants.
The company is now trying to fashion
itself into a good example, and it’s not
the defenders of sweatshops who made
this happen.

Those pushing for broader changes
throughout the industry are not asking
for congratulations. They know they
have plenty more to do. It’s help that’s wanted.

Mark Engler is a senior analyst with Foreign Policy
In Focus and author of 'How to Rule the World: The
Coming Battle Over the Global Economy' (Nation
Books, 2008). He can be reached via the website:
DemocracyUprising.com

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